An Interesting Turn of Events

I was talking with my BMIM family about my lack of patience with this process. At this point I am more than ready to have a baby on the way. The only thing stopping me is money, time, and the military! LoL! So, while we're waiting for orders to our next duty station so that we can start the adoption process, I started talking to my extended family about surrogacy and gestational carriers. You have to understand something about my BMIM (Beautiful Military Interracial Marriages) family.... These men and women are the best of the best. Everyone is extremely sweet, kind, giving, and loving. I love them all to death. They've supported me to the fullest with everything, and now that I'm thinking of surrogacy on top of adoption, I'm excited at the prospect of having TWO kids next year! Rob and I are fully committed to the adoption process. So, don't think that if we decide to pursue surrogacy that we're going to change our minds about adoption. That's NOT going to happen. It's the very first thing we're going to do when we get our orders and move. Before we even unpack, we're going to apply to an adoption agency and start the home study process.... BUT, we're now officially starting to talk about surrogacy as well and we have 2 beautiful and generous women that we want to be our carriers. I think it'll be a really beautiful thing to expand our family in every way possible. Now I can fully understand Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's thinking when they started their family. We haven't made a decision yet, but I can't wait to see how this plays out!

Just Fun!

I must admit that I'm the type of person who loves to have fun. I love to travel and see interesting things. That's probably one of the main things me and the hubby have in common. We love it! And we love our crew and extended military/work family. We're constantly planning different things to do, and looking to invite everyone along. We've found that if we go somewhere and do something seriously fun and don't at least invite people, they seem to get really offended. LoL! But we don't mind having people with us. It actually makes it a lot more fun. Like, today we went to tour the Capitol building with some of the crew. We had a friggin blast as usual! We're already planning our next gathering and I can't wait!

Cranky Much?

My husband is a friggin clean freak. It kind of balances me out because even though I won't let the house get nasty and disgusting, I really don't mind a mess. And since we've been married, we had an agreement that as long as I'm home, the house will be decently clean (meaning more to his standards and one or two days to mine). So, since I've been working, I must admit that my husband has taken over most of my kitchen duties. He's pretty good at cooking, cleaning and keeping everything organized. The thing that bugs me is that he doesn't do it without complaint. It kind of makes me mad that he refers to it as being my "job". As a matter of fact, everything around this house is referred to as my "job". Like, seriously? Is this the 50's? Better yet, is this slavery? And then he gets really mad when I do my Slave/Master routine. That's probably one thing that I know pisses of my husband more than anything in the world. And I'll admit, that's why I do it. I only do it when I'm mad in order to get him mad..... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. It's unhealthy for my marriage to antagonize my husband. Whatever! But I have to give him credit. Even though he complains and his complaints grate on my nerves like nothing else I'd ever known, he's picking up the slack around here. I really appreciate that. It's always really sexy when I come home and my man is in the kitchen making dinner and joking around with me. But those days that I'm overwhelmed from working, errands, and other things and he tells me that I haven't done my job.... Well, sometimes I want to knuckle punch him in the nuts! Don't get me wrong. I really, really love my husband, but those moments where a clean house matters more than my health and sanity drives me crazy. And soon I'm going to be having surgery (hopefully), going back to school which is going to add to my stress, and we're going to be moving, and hopefully we're going to be starting the adoption process. Life is getting busier than ever and while I love that we're closer to getting to our end goal (starting a family, his retirement from the military, and my new career), it's hard to make him understand that my whole life doesn't revolve around cleaning the damn house! Have you ever had one of these overwhelming days?

Hurtful? Yeah, But I Don't Care....

So, I've gotten tons of questions asking why we're adopting, and why don't we just keep trying for a biological child. That's a little irritating at this point, but understandable. I understand that people are going to ask questions and make comments, but what I don't understand are the stupid ones. The unnecessary racist ones. My marriage is sacred. I love my husband, and it never mattered to us that we're an interracial couple. And it doesn't matter to our friends either. So, I guess I shouldn't be as upset and hurt as I am right now. Everyone that matters to me in life are extra supportive and that's all I can ask for. We will bring children into our little interracial marriage, and they will be any race and biracial as well. And for the person that said to me biracial children are evil and unnatural. Well, you can go to hell!

Just amazing!

I have to admit that I'm still just amazed at the response we've gotten from family and friends when we announced that we were adopting. We have one group who's already organizing a Diaper Collection, another group suggested that I start an online baby registry so that those who want to buy and donate baby items can do so, as well as a few friends giving me ideas to put together for an auction to help with funding. Not only that, but there are a few who've suggested small jobs on the side of my real job to help offset some of the costs. There's no denying that I hated putting myself out there. We just don't do that. For fourteen years, we've been trying to do things on our own. It's nice to know that we have the support of our family and friends. I'm just hoping that with everything else going on in our lives, we can get this accomplished by the end of the year.

And So We Start The First Step Towards Adoption.....

http://www.giveforward.com/adoptionofbabymartinez2013 I don't ever admit defeat. I don't ever ask for help either. So, why am I doing it now? I guess because I'm tired. It's been a long journey, and while it's not even close to over, I need some help to keep going. 14 years of infertility would normally wear a person down. And I won't say that I'm not worn out by it. But it takes a strong person to keep going through all of the poking, prodding, needles, invasive tests, and miscarriages..... Yep, I'm patting myself on the back. That's another thing I don't usually do. We've decided that adoption is probably our best option for completing our family. We've always said that we were going to do it, but for some reason, the hubby insisted that we try to have a biological child first. After everything, we kept trying and trying because he kept saying he wanted a biological child first. Well, here we are 14 years later with empty arms and an empty house. So, it's been decided that when we get to our next duty station we're going to try to adopt. That's all well and good, and we're beyond excited but adoption cost so much money. It's really expensive. That's another reason why we've been putting it off. Adoption of a baby can run up to $45,000. There are some that say that if you can't afford to adopt, then you can't afford children at all. Those are the same people who got pregnant on the first month of trying and gave birth to a healthy baby. I mean, what NORMAL person has $45,000 in their bank account to just hand over to an adoption agency?!?! Well, we don't. We've decided to save most of my personal paychecks and to also try to get a personal loan to finance our adoption. But we have to decide what kind of adoption we want to go with first. Either way, I've decided to do one of those online fundraisers to help with the costs. I don't expect to raise the full amount. I'm just hoping to raise enough to do the home study. From there, we'll apply for grants and loans. I'm also happy that I talked to a good friend about doing an auction. Now I need to gather up everyone I know who's selling anything to maybe donate. I'm also going to see about donating some unused things of my own. I'm hoping it all works out and we can go through with the adoption without completely going into debt. We've already spent so much on fertility treatments and meds. Thankfully, we have good friends and family to help us through this. Once again: Here's the link to our online fundraiser (http://www.giveforward.com/adoptionofbabymartinez2013) and I'll keep everyone informed of the auction whenever we get it going.